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>> Hi everyone!
I'm Rhonda Taylor.
I'm a Senior Adviser and Acting Deputy Director in the Office
of Public Engagement and Partnerships at the Corporation
for National and Community Service.
We're so excited that you could join us today to talk
about the 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance
and how you maximize it for your community and your organization.
Also, joining us today are David Paine who is the Founder
and CEO of My Good Deed.
David along with his friend
and business colleague Jay Winik began My Good Deed to pay honor
and tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Jay lost his brother who is a volunteer fire first responder
in the 9/11 attack.
CNCS collaborates with My Good Deed
which annually organizes the 9/11 "I Will" campaign on behalf
of the 9/11 community.
You will hear more about the
"I Will" campaign during this webinar
and how it can help your organization grow this important
day of service and remembrance
and sustain volunteer activity over time.
Also joining us today is Jacque Aker.
Jacque is our Director of Marketing here at CNCS
and she'll talk to you about resources available
to help you raise awareness about 9/11 in your projects
that are available from CNCS as well as some of the resources
that are made available through My Good Deed.
>> Excuse me, Rhonda.
People are indicating
that they're having a hard time hearing you.
>> I'm sorry.
Okay.
>> If you could please speak up.
>> Okay.
>> That would be great.
Thank you.
>> So just a little housekeeping before we begin.
When it's time for our question and answer session,
you will be instructed to be press star 1
on your telephone keypad and you'll be placed
in the question and answer cue.
At any point, you can include comments in the chat feature
or ask question in the chat feature.
At the end of the presentation, the PowerPoint will be emailed
to all participants and a recording
of today's webinar will be posted to our website,
www.serve.gov/sept11.asp.
If you have any questions after the webinar,
please email us at sept11@cns.gov.
Our objectives for today are helping you
to better utilize the days of service
to advance your overall mission and sustainability
and grow your volunteer base and champions for your work.
Presenting your data to show the impact of your service work.
Demonstrating accountability to funders and stakeholders.
Telling your story to help justify continued funding
and other support.
And to attract and maintain and sustain volunteers that may come
out and volunteer with you and achieving maximum value
for your days of service including 9/11
for your organization and for your community.
[ Pause ]
Just a little history and background.
In 2009, Congress designated September 11th
as the National Day of Service and Remembrance
and charged the Corporation for National and Community Service
to supporting this effort across the country.
CNCS supports the 9/11 day through grants to organizations
to engage their larger networks or their communities
in service activities around--
service and remembrance activities around the day.
My Good Deed, David's organization,
is one of our collaborators
and as I mentioned launched the "I Will" campaign.
A full list of our National Day of Service
and Remembrance grantees can be found again
on our website serve.gov/sept11.
Before we get going on this webinar,
I wanted to let everyone know on the phone
that CNCS will be launching a new RSVP, Retired
and Senior Volunteer Program grant competition.
It's coming soon and the website below, you can find information
about that as soon as the notice of funding is posted.
So I hope you will all check out regularly our notice
of funding opportunities.
Preparing for 9/11.
I mentioned that CNCS gives out grants.
This year, our grants particularly focus our
activities in disaster services and mobilizing services with
and for veterans and military families.
So, you'll see more information about that on our website
and particularly, you can learn about our focus areas
at nationalservice.gov and our measures, performance measures.
We will be encouraging all of our grantees too
to the extent possible, focus activities in those areas.
So, I think I missed the slide [inaudible].
Okay. Thank you.
We'll start off this webinar with David Paine who will talk
to you about key findings
that will help you better promote your day of service.
Think more strategically about what is likely
to increase your volunteering engagement for the day.
And more importantly, increase the likelihood
that those volunteers will return to you organization
and continue to support you and your community.
David will present evidence from extensive surveys
to help simulate your thinking about growing
and deepening volunteer engagement.
And particularly, volunteering engagement around 9/11.
So David, it's all yours.
>> Well, Rhonda, thank you so much for hosting this webinar
and also for the corporation's continuing support
for this great observance and as probably many of you know,
the corporation has been a key partner
in promoting this September 11th National Day of Service
and Remembrance for many, many years and we're just delighted
to again work closely with you.
So, what I wanted to do today is talk a little bit
about the 9/11 observance but in context of it being a model
for ways in which you can leverage days
of service generally.
You know, so we've had a very unique experience ourselves.
There's an organization in running this observance
or helping to lead it.
And largely, because there have been so many people
that have participated in it.
We conducted some very comprehensive research
after 9/11 this past year.
And there were a record of 33 million people that engaged
in some form of charitable activity in observance of 9/11.
So it was an extraordinary response to the day but,
of course, that meant that a great many people
that participated were not the usual individuals
that typically volunteer.
They were people that sort of talk
about in the marketing world as being cause minded
versus say cause active.
And, you know, I speak maybe in this sort of marketing lingo
because both Jay and I came from the advertising
and public relations world before we started this
observance back in 2002.
So we tend to think a little bit about, you know,
ideas like customers and how could service be "sold
or marketed" to people.
I know that sounds sort of terrible to some degree
but in a lot of ways it's very helpful I think to all of us
when we think about how we can promote our respective
organizations and causes in ways that get more people involved
and interested in what we do.
So my hope today is to share with you some of the lessons
that we've learned and to provide some guidance
for you both which should help you in activating around 9/11
but also in how you can leverage days of service generally.
So let me begin by talking just simply about the principle
of days of service the way I think we see them.
And of course, we always do hear from many organizations
about whether days of service are really of value.
And certainly, we've seen and I think many
of our partners have seen that days
of service are absolutely invaluable.
It just depends on what your goals are
and what you're trying to achieve with them.
You know, the way we think of a day of service for, you know,
for 9/11 and I think this is true for many service days is
that it's really an opportunity for people to get to know you.
We sort of think of it almost as an open house.
It's not just a day when you take the time
to organize volunteer projects, particularly now
when you have younger people that are very internet savvy
that are coming into the system where there's
so many different ways to reach
out to people to get them involved.
And I think we all need to be thinking more broadly
about the opportunity that a day of service presents as a way
in which we can get more people aware of who we are.
So, I hope that you will think of them the way we do which is
that this is a chance to provide an orientation to new people
as well as to reinforce the relationships you have
with existing partners and to connect your potential
and existing supporters with the community that, you know,
that your organization serves.
So, of course, when we think about that today we're trying
to define engagement differently than just volunteering.
We say today okay, so what are the multitude of ways
in which an individual could support your cause.
Well, they can support it through volunteering.
They can support it through donations.
They can support it simply by being, you know, a Facebook fan
or a Twitter follower or they could be someone
who just is interested in getting,
you know, your mailing list.
And so we do think that it's very important today
to more broadly define service
so that volunteering isn't the only option that people have
to participate and learn about your group and support it.
The research that we've conducted particularly among
millennial, you know, people that are, you know, in the 20s
and to some degree teens has told us a couple of key things
and the most important is that they want to have choices.
And they want to be able to do things
to some degree on their own terms.
And so what it sort of means is that your
so called customer base consist of everybody from folks
that are ready to volunteer tomorrow to people
that don't know hardly anything about your organization
but would like to maybe learn more.
And so this day is a way in which you can sort
of segment your audience
and your activities to accommodate that.
That's how you're going to be more successful.
So, again, this idea of encouraging participants just
to join the mailing list, that that's a win.
Getting people to sign up and be part of your--
and support you on Facebook, that's a win.
It has everything to do with sort
of segmenting your customers, parking them in the right place
but then having a long term plan beyond the one day
where you're sort of essentially stepping them up the ladder
of engagement over time.
So if you think about, you know, if you've had to break it
down very, very simply and you'd say half the people are cause
activist, they are really ready to go and the other--
and the vast majority are cause minded.
And by the way, it's more
like 80 percent cause minded, 20 percent activist.
Your goal should be to think strategically
about how you leverage a day of service to transition people
who come into your system, come into your organization
and is cause-minded individuals and convert them into people
who become cause activist over time.
So a day of service is not really a day.
It's just a strategic opportunity for you
to consider what you can do, you know,
with them and move them along.
One of the really interesting tidbits that came
out of our research was this idea of emotional connection
and loyalty to a cause.
And particularly with the day
of service you oftentimes have people coming
in that are not necessarily connected to you.
They come in because they're connected
to another party like an employer.
You know, let's say Home Depot or Target
or another organization that's a big, you know,
and prominent supporter of service.
There are so many companies and others that do this.
Their employees come in and they are there because they want
to represent their company in terms of engaging in service,
not necessarily because they are there to support you
and the cause specifically.
So another example is 9/11 where we have so many people that come
in and they are there for one reason only which is they want
to participate in paying tribute on 9/11.
The 9/11 factor is their big motivator.
So, a key objective must be for you transfer there
so that reason for engagement from either the employer
or from the, you know, the day
of service motivation to the cause itself.
One of the biggest things we heard from people was
that they go to the events and then the organization
that hosted them, the nonprofit group would never really do a
very good job of telling the people why they are even there.
Like what were they doing?
What was this, what's unique about this school?
What was special about this shelter?
Where are these kids going?
What are they all about?
And so, almost in every case, a huge part of being successful
in the days of service is understanding
that many people are coming in without the emotional attachment
to the cause that you need in order
to make them long term customers and friends of yours.
So, you got to be thinking about orientation,
showing them a short film, giving them a little handout,
talking to them about what's happening,
giving them a short little tour just
so that they understand why they're there before they're
out painting or doing these things that they're doing.
So, again, this is very much an open house.
It's like an orientation like when we go to college
for the first time and all the clubs are there
and they do orientations
and they get too excited about being involved.
That's really the way days of service should be thought
about for there are lots of things going on
and you make it fun, you know.
We also like to suggest to groups that they think
about ways to get their current supporters
to bring other new people into the program.
So, oftentimes you've seen success
where non-profits are put out, you know,
for their existing supporters saying if you bring somebody
and you have a buddy that comes with you then we'll enter you
in a drawing for a Starbucks' card.
You felt, it's little things like that
where they just get kind of creative and have a little fun
with it that seems to be successful.
And then the other key point I wanted to make is this idea
of just having, you know, having a plan right out of the gate
with the day after in mind.
So, that you're not just thinking about, you know,
gee ***, I got all these people on 911, I'm got them on MLK Day
or whatever, you know, initiative that I might have,
you know, I might have supported.
You're thinking about that just simply being the opportunity
where they put their toe in the water
and then you should have a clear plan.
You've got to know how you are going to bring these people back
and you should set some goals for that.
So, you could say, okay, this first year out of all the people
that come, we want 10 percent of those people to sign
up for our mailing list at the end
of the project or we want something.
Now, setting this goal, you might only get 5 percent
but then think about it next year and say, okay,
we did 5 percent this year, how can we get to 7 percent?
How can we get to 9 percent?
It's all about sort of leveraging this idea
of continued improvement to make your day
of service more powerful and meaningful to you long term.
For me, I'm a data person, I'm really into collecting data.
So, I think it's really important to find an opportunity
if you don't already do it to provide all the participants
with a short little card that they complete while they sit
down for a minute, you know, maybe you have a pizza party
at the end or you serve coffee and you do something
that lets them kind of get together again,
sort of where you thank them and then you give them a card
and they fill that out on the way.
You could also do online surveys.
You know, Survey Monkey and other tools are free and easy
to use, they're relatively free and easy to use
and you can email your participants
if you have email list, you know, that you've gathered.
But I think it's great just
to get a feedback right then and there.
And again, you're using that data
so you can establish benchmarks and baselines for your success.
So, everything is about measurement and impact.
You know, you're not-- you can't continue improve something
if you don't know what you've accomplished so you got
to have data, you got to know who's there, why they're there,
the type of people that are there.
What motivated them to get involved?
What do they think of the experience?
Are they likely to come back again?
Those are things that you got to have because, otherwise,
you know, you have this big opportunity with 9/11
or another day, and then you waste it, you know,
if you don't take full advantage of learning who comes in
and how you can get them involved the next time around.
This idea of measuring your success,
I know many of the organizations already do this now
and do it well so, I would just want to continue
to re-inform the importance of determining in advance
so that how are you going to define it.
So, what is success for you?
You know, again, for a day for service I would be thinking
of it multitude of different ways.
I'd be saying well, what does success look
like on the social media level?
What does it look like when it comes to people who've signed
up for our mailing list?
What does it look like for people
that actually got out and served?
What does it look like in terms of the number of new people
that got involved that weren't involved last year
that we've never known before
and where do we get those people?
So, you know, this is just very smart marketing and it's,
I think all of us in the service community use some
of these tools and tips more effectively.
We're going to be seeing better results from days of service
and frankly, many of the things that we do.
So, I wanted to just put this into context of 9/11
so that you can understand what this means to you
as we move toward this upcoming anniversary off the heels of,
you know, the 10 year anniversary observance.
So, as I mentioned last year we had an all-encompassing day
of service that involved projects all around the country,
we activated more than 700,000 volunteers
so the 33 million people as I mentioned that got involved
in community service of some nature.
We had a terrific school program
where we had 50,000 classroom students doing different things,
we had a launch at that year in Washington
where we were stitching an American flag that's been nearly
destroyed in the ground zero attack.
And this event involved more than 200 members of Congress
and first responders, family members and others
and then we had kiosks in many, many places.
We focused quite a bit on social media, we counted that.
We said that's important.
However we get people involved, that counts.
And what end up happening is there was
so much social media attention
that at 9/11 day became the number one trending user
on Twitter worldwide on September 11th and of course,
we're pushing that again this year to encourage people
to use the hash tag 9/11 day and tweet
and talk about the observance.
It's just a very powerful way to get going and our sort
of launch date happens to be August the 16th
when we have what we're sort of defining
as the big social media roadblock.
We have more than 60 celebrities and others
that will be beginning to tweet about 9/11 day
at that time urging people to get out and serve
on September 11th and to support various charitable causes.
This is a tremendous opportunity for you to join in,
so you should definitely put August 16th on your calendar
in the morning and start posting positive messages and doing
at 9/11 day and then we hope it will begin to trend both
on that day and of course, more and more
so as we get closer to 9/11.
They-- you know, many of you probably have Facebook,
you know, pages and other ways
in which you get people involved here.
I'm a big believer in this because it's a way
in which you can continue to keep these people involved.
We went from no fans to 300,000 in just about 60 days
and we're expecting it will exceed a million fans this year.
We have 45,000 new likes on 9/11.
So, you know, you're going to want to count that.
That means something to you as well because these are people
that stay in your community,
these are people you can post information to.
These are folks that ultimately you can begin to move them
into other activities.
It's about having an all, you know, encompassing,
comprehensive outreach strategy.
You could see also too that with serve and serve.gov,
there are so many great ways in which you can participate
through the social media effort.
You know, we have our page but of course,
you know that we serve-- serve.gov has their--
have a lot of their initiatives and social media activities.
So, participate everywhere you possibly can.
And of course, you know, we're going to be watching a lot
of these ourselves and retweeting and reposting as much
of what you share with us as we possibly can.
This is just what it looked like last year when I was referring
to the 33 million Americans that got involved in service.
So, a remarkable number of almost 40 percent
of the nearly 80 million that remembered the day
through some activity including prayer
and private forums of remembrance.
And over time, it'll be service that will be the primary legacy
of 9/11 as the years go by.
So, it's a great opportunity for everybody to get involved
and as you can see, it was across the board, not just,
you know, not just in any one region of the country.
In fact, we did pretty much as well in the southeast as we did
in the northeast where the attacks actually happened.
What we thought was interesting was the large number of people
who participated who said that they rarely volunteer.
So, and then again, 9/11 was attracting a lot of people
who don't normally and traditionally volunteer.
Largely, that had to do with our call to action
where we said do whatever, you know, you care about.
Even a good deed count or come to our Facebook page
or follow us on Twitter.
You know, we gave people opportunities to support us
by not locking them in to any one way of doing it.
And I think that's a very important lesson
for almost everybody in every organization and service today.
This was, you know, an indication
of what their even future holds.
Well, we had 52 percent of the people
who didn't participate said they'd like to
if they just simply were asked.
The number one reason why people didn't participate in 9/11
in the last year was didn't know--
they didn't run into an opportunity.
They didn't have a faith organization or a school
or an employer, or another entity reach out to them
and say, we're having a project for 9/11,
would you like to participate?
Have they ran into that,
we would have another 25 million people participated of the 33.
So, the number one call to action
for everyone is, hey, do something.
You know, plan something for 9/11.
And if it's a volunteer project and it's open to the public,
make sure you register it with All for Good 'cause on our site,
we're going to list every single one of those projects
and make them available to a very easy search engine.
Public awareness simply show that if, you know,
if they didn't know about the day then they weren't likely
to participate, but if they heard about it, they were.
So, all of your efforts to build awareness of it will result
in more people participating.
Again, what we're simply saying here is that there's going
to be a tremendous [inaudible] of opportunity for all of you
to get involve if you kind of approach it
in a sort of interesting way.
We have a very significant PSA campaign this year
that we'll have more than 20 million in donated media
with a lot of celebrities involved in a great campaign.
They'll kick off on the 16th of August and carry
through 9/11 this year.
Some of these spots will be available through serve.gov
and on our website at 911day.org.
You can download them.
They are agnostic to any cause.
So you can at the bottom of them, separately,
put a little support, you know,
button that relates to your organization.
And if you do that, what we found was that people
who see those PSA are much more likely to support your cause
than if they didn't see that.
So, this is an example.
So, in the research, we've found that for people
that saw those PSAs last year, 55 percent of them were likely
to participate, and participating compared
to just 16 percent of the people who didn't see them
which was very meaningful.
And-- 46 percent that didn't see them.
And then, it doubled people's interest in donating
if they saw them and it tripled their interest in volunteering.
So, in other words, if they're on your site and with a call
to action just to support your cause which is certainly fine
with us, it's going to help you
with both volunteering and raising money.
So, quickly, I'll just touch on the priority programs this year
so you know what they are.
We have this great website that we'll launch again on the 16th
that we-- where we will be retweeting a lot of your tweets
and where we'll have celebrity videos and others.
This is where organizations can share their plans for 9/11.
Here's the simplified sort of volunteer search engine
where we're including both All for good
and VolunteerMatch listings.
So, if you got a project that's planned
or volunteer opportunities, please put them
into whichever service you use and we will have it
on our site for you to consider.
We have great education program underway,
great impact service event
that Rhonda mentioned supporting military and the veterans
in many cities around the country,
and other great resources and tools.
So, Jacque, let me turn that over to you.
>> Great, thanks David.
And so I'm just going to spend a few minutes talking about some
of the resources that both of our organizations have created
for your use and they are free, which is a wonderful thing.
We love being able to provide you free resources
to help you further what you're doing locally and to be able
to give you some tool that you can use in bulk quantities.
So, what you have here is a screen shot
of our online ordering system and these are--
we're going to pull up the actual sites and then kind
of show you how you can access these free resources
and order them through the corporation's website.
You can get to it by going to National Service,
www.nationalservice.gov/pub
and that will take you right into this homepage.
If you've noticed on the recently added product,
you see we have just recently added the September 11th
free resources.
So when you're in the system you can search briefly
at the products, if you look also
over to the right hand side you'll see all the different
resources that you can get.
And if you go down by program and initiative,
you'll see second to the bottom is the 9/11 day
of service and remembrance.
If you click on that, that's going to bring up all
of the September 11 recourses.
And we'll slip back to the PowerPoint
where you can see them in a larger size.
But this is where you'll be able to order all of the resources.
It's just like Amazon, you know, you add them to your cart,
you check out, and it's really a great system for you to be able
to get the materials that you need.
We do set limits on some of the materials
but that doesn't mean you can't get additional quantity.
So let's say, for example, you wanted to order item number 4
of the 11 by 17 poster and you wanted to order 200
because you had a big event or something that you are working
on and the system only allows you to order 25.
You're able to type in what you're doing, you know,
you would tell me, I'm doing an event and we need, you know,
additional posters for the following reason.
When you submit that through the system, I get an email
and then I would approve your order, you know,
based on what your actual event is.
So please, you know, feel free
to order what you need for your event.
And then we will, you know, support those requests.
So let's jump back to the PowerPoint slide
so you can see some of the items in a little larger format.
>> Just a second.
>> Great. So, on the next slide, you'll see some
of the additional resources broken out.
So this is really what we call a poster or site sign.
And you'll see that we've also incorporated, obviously,
that we are part of the larger
"I Will" initiative and campaign.
And we've included that information on the new materials
that we've added this year.
And so we encourage you to use that as well
if you're creating things locally.
You know, you can access the logos from both My Good Deed
and the corporation, you know,
if you're creating something yourself.
We did create a fact sheet.
You know, this is a great tool that you can use
for different meetings that you might be having now
to educate people in the community
about what is the day of service.
And so you can order these in bulk quantity for your use.
So, on the next slide we also created buttons on the left.
You can order those for your event.
And the stickers, they come in sheets of 16 stickers
and you can order those as well
for your various events for free.
The lapel pin, however, that is our one cost item
and that will be through our online ordering system
for cost items like where you would purchase AmeriCorps
t-shirts and other things.
But we did want to show it to you here,
especially if you're having a really, you know,
special event you might want to invest and getting some
of these for, you know, key guests or speakers or, you know,
it's just a-- it's a nice thank you to be able
to provide something like that.
On the next slide, we really created these based
on Martin Luther King Day.
They were really successful for that day of service
and so we also created them for September 11th.
On the left, it's a door hanger,
where you can actually add your local information.
You can, you know, that has to be sophisticated.
You can take a sharp B and write the information on there
or you might want to, you know, print out a sticker
that you might want to add this information.
And these are great.
They're really, you know, you can use them in lots
of different ways, they could be utilized in the school,
to be hang on doors, people hang them on dorm rooms and colleges,
even in the local community.
You know, if you're going to be doing some local project,
this would be a way to let the community know that you're going
to be there and invite them to participate in advance
of the service project that you might be conducting.
On the right hand side are bookmarks that are two sided
that you also order in bulk quantity as well.
And then on the next slide,
My Good Deed also has created some great "I Will" resources
that you can access at 9/11day.org.
And there's just some really awesome toolkit here and a lot
of planning materials.
We're going to pull up the sites for you as well,
that's what we're doing right now.
But just some really great toolkit and things
that you can utilize locally, instead of trying
to create something, to really go here
and utilize these resources.
A lot of time and energy and expertise have gone
into developing these for your local use.
And here is a guide, you know, that you can utilize
in planning your project locally.
And also my favorite is I love the teaching tools.
I think they're really well done, very useful
and just a wonderful addition to how you can honor the day
by using some of the teaching tools as well.
And we're clicking on one of them,
the food rescue and service project.
I think it's going to come up.
And this was worked on in partnership with Scholastic
which is just a wonderful partnership
that My Good Deed has been able
to establish in honoring the day.
So these are just some really,
really great resources that you can utilize.
Scholastic pushes this out to the school,
but you can also utilize them as organization,
and if you have relationship with schools
and staff we would encourage you to, you know,
encourage those teachers and others to utilize the material.
And then as I mentioned earlier you can also access logos
and other assets for download also
from the My Good Deed website as well.
And I think we are ready for Q&A.
So I'm going to hand it back over to Rhonda Taylor.
>> Thank you Jacque and thank you David.
So we're going to take just a minute to thank our colleagues
at Campaign Consultation.
They helped us with all of the materials
and logistics for this webinar.
And so, you've heard their voices from time to time.
Thank you Campaign-- friends and colleagues
at Campaign Consultation.
So before we turn it-- open it for questions, I just wanted to,
you know, reiterate a couple of things
that David and Jacque both said.
There are some great resources on both our website.
The information that David presented gives you a lot
to think about around the organization
of your service project in making sure
that you have enough time to incorporate conversations
about issues in your community and some techniques he mentioned
that will help you sustain and encourage your volunteer base.
So Holly, could we open it for Q&A?
>> Certainly, thank you.
At this time we'll begin the question and answer session.
At this time if you'd like to ask a question,
please press star then 1 on your phone
and pleas record your first name and last name when prompted
so I may introduce you.
That's star then 1.
At anytime to withdraw your question, star then 2.
Once again to ask a question star 1, one moment please.
While we're waiting for questions to come
in through the line, we do have a question on the chat feature.
The question is asking whether
or not there is a press release template that they--
that's available that emphasizes the 9/11 day of service.
>> This is Rhonda at the Corporation
for National Community Service.
We will have another webinar on August 9th and that webinar
on August 9th will focus on media relation and tools
and resources and messaging around media.
So, I encourage you to tune back in on August 9th
or at least sign up for to get the materials.
>> Yeah, and this is David too and just to add
that there will be a marketing sort of PR toolkit
that will be added on our website as well
that will provide like last year some template press releases
and TFAs and other sort of scripts and things
that you can use in your own community.
>> Great. We do have another question as well.
Again, are there some other examples of successful 9/11 day
of service projects that you can share?
[ Pause ]
>> Well--
>> I mean--
>> Go ahead.
>> Rhonda, do you want to go ahead?
>> No, go ahead, David.
I mean there are tons but go ahead.
>> Yeah, I mean, yeah I mean they're thousands of them.
It just kind of depends on sort of the nature
of the project you're interested in doing
but you know what we tend to define is that first
of all we get a lot of people that want to show up.
So the first thing we're thinking
about is how do we handle a large number of volunteers
and so, that tends to put us in a situation where we have a,
you know where we want to have activities
that can accommodate a variety of different groups of people.
So oftentimes we'll go to public schools as a charity group
and we will engage in lots of different things happening
so we might have crafts projects for 10 or 15 people,
we might be helping to reorganize a library
for another 30 people and maybe a mural outside
where we got 20 people doing that.
We may also be assembling care packages for military personnel.
This year, in a number of communities,
we're assembling comfort kits for homeless individuals
and then the other separate group of people
that are doing little cards and letters that are going
into the Ziploc bags that contain those materials.
So where we've kind of been successful is
when we break people up into different groups
where we don't expect more than about a 2-hour commitment and so
where we can actually do it in shifts.
And then the other thing we do try to do is we try
and take projects that are not busy work.
You know, where we are really trying to do something
that they need and where the resources, the money
or the people that are involved are of great value to them
and not just a lot of people doing different things.
The other thing I have learned as well is
that it's usually better not to have too many speeches upfront.
You want to do some talking, you do want to orient them
on the cause so they get that emotional connection,
but you want to get people working as fast as possible.
So those are a few of the kind of general best practices
that we've seen that have worked and of course, I mean,
you can certainly email me
out with any specific questions at all.
And it's a david.paine@911day.org,
and I'm happy to answer questions,
provide additional information
about best practices specific to your needs.
>> And I would say that the list of successful
and wonderful project is limited,
only limited by your imagination.
We have any number of things that we can provide you samples,
that we have toolkits online that give you suggested kinds--
ideas and topics about anything from really great food drives
that involve your whole community,
to construct food pantries to gleaning in climates
and communities where it's a time to glean fresh produce
to repairing homes for disabled or elderly
or helping prepare a home for, a homecoming for soldiers.
I mean the list is really long.
I think the important thing is
that whatever you're doing meet the real community need,
because your volunteers want to be doing something
that they feel like is important.
So it's, I think it's-- the key to a successful project is
to assess the needs and the attractiveness of that need
to your, to your volunteers.
>> Holly, at this point do we have any questions
on the phone line?
>> Actually, no further questions in the phone.
I'd like to remind participants, if you do have any questions
to the phone line, please press star then 1.
One moment.
>> Okay, we do still have a few more questions
on the Q&A feature.
Someone wanted to know Jacque,
how much does that 9/11 pin cost?
>> Well, they are working on getting that cost determined,
but it won't be that much, you know.
I would say it's going to be between probably 2
and 4 dollars per pin.
>> Okay, great thank you.
Another question is do we use program funding,
and this must be from a national service grantee, to participate
or is there funding available for participation in 9/11
and if so, is it too late to request funding for this year?
Rhonda?
>> As far as your existing programming you would need
to talk to your grant officer
and your program officer about that.
It depends on what-- how you characterize the use
of the funds in your own budget,
but that's a question you would need to take
up with your program and grant officer.
For the corporation we had a grant cycle that for 9/11,
a two-year cycle that we ran earlier in the spring.
A couple of those projects are sub granting
but they're running their own process.
You can get a list of our grantees at serve.gov/sept11.
There's a list of the grantees there.
Most of them are running their own project
so we've already given now out our funds for this year.
>> Great, and David, there's a question
for you in the chat feature.
This question is asking how your organization has worked
with the Mission Continues in the past.
>> Well--
>> It's current veterans and fellow
with the Mission Continues.
>> Well, first of all, they are a great organization
and they do a wonderful job and you know, last year we--
they were one of our partners for the 10 year anniversary
and help to bring military veterans to service projects
around the country and did that wonderfully.
So, so this year we felt it would be a good idea
to see what else we could do even more strategically.
So, as you know the Mission Continues, one of the goals
for the organization is to help provide training
to military veterans so that they can become
non-profit leaders.
They have a fellowship program for that purpose and one
of the requirements of the fellowship program is
that these military veterans get some direct experience running
large scale volunteer projects.
So, for this 9/11, the Mission Continues
and their fellows will actually be co-leading the main projects
that we'll be implementing around the country.
So, they will be on the ground,
they will be running these projects,
they'll be leading them and they'll be getting, you know,
capacity building experience as a result of that
and then additionally, there will be military veterans,
active duty personnel and their families involved
as participants and volunteers of these projects.
So, our experience with them has been much more detailed
this year.
I think they're doing a great job
and they're wonderful organization.
>> Okay, the final question that we have at this point
in the Q&A feature is have you seen situations
where 9/11 service projects
or events have been done on alternate weekend?
>> The answer to that is absolutely and in fact,
there are quite a lot of organizations
that do conduct them on weekends
and on other days besides 9/11 and, you know, what we've tried
to communicative is that we want people to serve in observance
of 9/11 sort of in tribute to,
but doesn't mean it has to be on that day.
I mean a lot of people like to serve on that day,
a lot of employees and individuals find that day
to be exciting, you know, to be, you know,
as sort of their opportunity to get out
and do something specifically on 9/11 but of course,
many groups have had great success doing things
on the weekend before and after.
In fact, I think a DC Cares has had huge projects
that had happened not necessarily on 9/11
but on other days on a weekend.
So, we've seen it worked both ways
and worked both ways successfully.
>> Yes, we agree and we think that probably given the timing
of 9/11 in the week this year that projects are likely--
more likely to book end rather than be primarily on the day.
>> You know, it's kind of funny because in the last 9/11
and the year before the observance fell on a weekend,
you know, Saturday and then last year Sunday.
And then in prior years, it's happened on weekdays and,
you know, we've seen quite a lot of--
you know, it's funny because at the employer level
when companies have done things on 9/11 itself
when it's a workday they did better than when they, you know,
put them on over the weekend
because as you might imagine their colleagues from work,
you know, is supposed to get a day off,
you know, they take it, right?
So, this year it's a Tuesday, so there are, you know,
certain employers that are going to be putting projects
on the 9/11 itself will probably get a pretty good response rate.
But it really just depends on the group.
And from our standpoint, it doesn't matter,
we just want people to get out and serve.
>> I would also say that for those of you who may be thinking
about a weekend project, David talked earlier
about how important it is from the very beginning
to plan your followup.
We all know about event fatigue and that you've worked so hard
to put it on your service project and the day is over
and the next day is over and you aren't so good or we aren't.
I would say we are certainly guilty of that,
so good at following up immediately.
If you plan your followup in advance, you have your project
on the weekend and 9/11 is a couple of days later,
that may be the perfect moment to follow up with everyone
who volunteered and thank them
and have some little remembrance activity.
So I would encourage you to be really strategic about spending
as much time planning your immediate followup as almost
as planning your project because it will matter
to the sustainability of those volunteers.
>> Any further questions from anyone?
>> I do have a couple of questions from the phone.
>> Oh good.
>> The first question comes from Robbie Crinch [phonetic].
Your line is open.
>> Hello.
>> Hi.
>> Hi, actually, this is not
so much a question, it's an observation.
>> Uh-hmm.
>> And it's something that I heard a number of times
at the turning point conference this past summer
and I'm finding really so is I'm just starting to work
with veterans and their families here in California
and that is the approach to veteran services
that which I heard you speak of is asking veterans to work with
and to ask for a community need that they consist a meeting.
The veterans and their families are very serving
and service oriented and it's much less effective to say well,
what can we do for these poor veterans than it is to say,
there's a compelling need here that we can work on together
and we need you to, you know,
to work with us or we need your help.
So it's a different way of framing the way
that we're approaching veterans' needs not avoiding the needs,
but saying, invite them into a work together situation
because these are folks who are used to serving
and want to continue to serve.
So it's a different mindset than I've been approaching before
and I'm finding in conservation
and planning it's really effective different angle
to come at it.
>> Absolutely, veterans and their families are among some
of the most physically active in their communities,
volunteering here and abroad.
So the language we use is very important with and for.
>> Well, and the other thing too is I know
with the Mission Continues we're on the call and other, you know,
veteran serving organization so I mean they,
they're very sensitive about the importance of making sure
that we're positioning veterans as leaders.
You know, people that are capable
of brining these amazing skills and talents to bear to help
with non-profits in the private sector
as community and business leaders.
So, in all the projects that we were doing it was very important
not so much that we were, you know,
helping to work exclusively in supporting veterans
in need even though there are certainly many that do need--
do have special needs, but also that these, you know,
that the veterans that would be seen by the media,
by volunteers were upfront leading.
And so, you make
such a wonderful observation in that regard.
>> Another question?
>> I do have another question.
It comes from Ann Austinberg [phonetic].
Your line is open.
>> Hi, thank you so much.
Say, Rhonda and Jacque and if anyone else can address this.
Is there a list of which states the various service projects are
taking place in that are being organized by these grantees?
>> There is not a list yet, Ann, but there will.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> I mean, I-- Rhonda, do you want me to comment
in all the ones that we're doing?
>> Sure, go ahead.
>> Okay. Yeah, so we presently have--
we're going to be in six states.
We'll be in-- well, I'll give you the cities, so we're going
to be in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,
Dallas and then Minneapolis.
So those are the six that we're specifically organizing.
And then, of course, there are many other groups
that are planning to do 9/11 related projects
around the country and I just want
to reinforce again the importance of making sure
that if you have a 9/11 activity, definitely register.
I mean we would, you know, put it in all for Good
or VolunteerMatch or another location, Create the Good
or wherever you might be registering your projects
and include, you know, in your description,
in your keyword some reference to September 11th or 9/11
so that people that come to our site
or serve.gov can find these projects and sign up for that.
You know, we had close to a million people, you know,
come to our site last year.
We had over 40,000 of those people looking
for volunteer opportunities specifically,
and the number one comment we got back was
that they didn't find enough opportunities for them.
So, the degrees to which we can just create more projects,
list them, the better that's going to be.
And then, you know, even on our site separate
from the registration, you can post sort of what we call your
"I Will" which is what your organization will do for 9/11
and that gets posted in our system and gets tweeted out
and placed throughout, you know, the social media environment.
>> So, any other questions?
>> I see no further questions at this time.
>> Okay, we do have a few other questions in the Q&A feature.
>> Okay.
>> This one is asking when planning a followup,
is it that directly dealing with volunteer?
What about partner that provide services on the day
such as the Red Cross?
Do you have any suggestions about how to follow
up with local partners at the local level?
>> I think you should always plan
and debrief with local partners.
You want to get together
and assess together what worked well, what didn't work well,
and how you could move forward in a better direction.
If you think you could move forward in a better direction,
and also to celebrate the success.
It's really impor-- it's as important
to a firm how well things went and solidify that you
like working together.
So I would say, absolutely, you should always plan a followup
with your local partner.
>> We know that we're at the top of the hour
and that some people are going to be signing off.
We're going to be opening up a poll
for you to give us feedback.
The poll is on the right side of the screen,
right about where the question and answer
and the Q&A feature are.
Our poll is open now, if you would just use
that to enter a few questions and give us feedback
about this webinar so that we can improve future webinar.
However, we will stay on the line
and answer remaining questions.
>> I have one other,
just a final note before we answer anymore questions.
I just want to remind everybody
of the social media push on August 16th.
It could really help you boost your local presence
and your own local project as well as create a buzz
that always helps, you know, the rising tide does life all boats.
So I would just encourage you to think
about the social media push in mid-August.
Are there any other questions?
>> There's one question.
Where can I get a list of places to register my projects?
So you talked about All for Good,
where should they be registering, Rhonda?
>> If you go to serve.gov, in the middle of the page,
there'll be a button about registering your project
or sign up your project.
I don't know what exactly what it says but it's pretty obvious.
And when you click on that, it will give you a list of options
for registering your projects.
And you can choose whichever one you want.
>> Yeah, and no matter which one you choose, it will--
both projects will feed into our central database
and will be available for search on our site and on serve.gov.
>> And we can't-- we can't emphasize enough, please,
please, please sign up, list your project with someone
that gets fed into an aggregator.
And if you work with--
collaboratively with organizations in your community
and others that are doing projects, please encourage them
to list their projects too.
As David said, people want to volunteer and they need
to find a place to do it.
And they will come to-- when they Google search,
they'll get 9/11, they'll get David's website
and probably ours and the project registry.
So, people can't find a place to volunteer if you don't post it.
>> Those are all the questions that we have on the line.
So, Rhonda if you would like to-- oh, wait.
[Laughter] They keep coming.
Who would like to talk a little bit more
about this social media push that's going
to happen in August?
>> Sure. So, typically each year we have a sort
of a kickoff moment that, you know,
give or take a month to 3 weeks from 9/11.
And this year, the primary push is very much social media focus.
So, while we will do some things that are sort of traditional
in nature, which I'll talk about in a second.
Overwhelmingly, we're encouraging organizations
and individuals and celebrities and others
that have supported us in the past to begin the process
on the 16th of August so posting messages of support
on the morning of 8/16.
And that can be both on Facebook or Twitter or even Tout,
and I'll talk about Tout in a minute.
But, if you use Twitter, I mean, of course we would like you
to follow up and you can follow the serve.gov at Twitter page
as well but you want to whenever you're tweeting
about what you're going to do or urging your followers to support
and participate in 9/11 day this year,
you want to use the hashtag-- the hashtag 911 day.
So don't put a slash or anything like that, just 911 D-A-Y.
You can also use hashtag, I Will, which a lot of people do
as well but the primary is 911 day.
And then as you see things coming through and people are--
might be other people to follow you or you're following them
and they are tweeting about it.
Well then you want to retweet that,
you want to create some buzz and excitement
around what's happening.
And of course, the purpose of that is to build awareness
of what's going to happen on 9/11, a few weeks out.
It's almost too late to do it on 9/11 itself.
Now, we, like I said, we get your tweets and tons
of social media support on September 11
and we want that again.
But the-- specifically, on the 16th,
that's sort of our kickoff.
Now, that will be the same day when our ads will break on ABC.
It would be the same day when our website goes live.
We have a new one, the one that, you know,
currently has all the resources on it.
Right now, that's actually an interim site.
All those same resources will be on the permanent site,
they'll be identical, so don't worry when it switches over.
It's going to be-- it will be a little cooler and neater
and have more functionality.
But that breaks on the 16th.
On Facebook, you know, you can file,
you can join our Facebook page as well as the CNCS's
and the serve.gov page.
You know, ours is just facebook/911day.
You can be a fan of that page but you can also post
on your own page what, you know, what you're doing.
You can post on our page too what your sort of I Will is.
So you can explain what your organization is planning to do
and you could actually post that on our page.
We're one of the few pages that have sort of the opportunities
for our fans and followers to provide live feedback.
Now Tout is a new tool that is a video tweet
for all practical purposes.
You can go to tout.com, you can set up an organization account.
It's, you know, it's free just like, you know, Twitter
and you can tape a 15-second video.
You can then edit it and make sure you're happy
with it then you could push it out through, you know, Facebook
and through Twitter and other mechanism.
So it's sort of a new way of getting the word out
and our website will actually have a Tout feature built in.
So when people come to our site
and they post an I Will they can share it through Facebook,
Twitter or they can even add a video.
So that's sort of in essence what's happening to social media
and again, we have a lot of celebrities and the NFL and lots
of other organizations jumping in to participate.
And then in New York, specifically in Times Square,
we have this giant 30-foot I Will sculpture
which you'll actually see in one of the two videos
that we have on our site.
And we're going to have that down on Military Island outside
of Good Morning America Studios.
We're in conversation with their producers
about having them do a story about the kickoff
of the campaign and for at least a day we're going to have people
from throughout the city and many other folks and children
and others coming down from some schools and posting,
standing on the sculpture and posting their I Will
and we'll be sharing those photos on line.
So it'll be a lot of fun.
>> Okay. We're going to take this one final question
which is someone wants to know, David,
what activities you have going on in Washington,
D.C. and will they take place on 9/11 or the weekend prior.
>> Well, so we are working in our primary--
it's part of our primary market for service activities
in partnership with CNCS and the project is specifically on 9/11.
We haven't announced the exact location and details of it yet.
But of course, it will be in partnership with and led
by Mission Continues and the Washington, D.C. area,
Baltimore area, Volunteers of America organization.
So we'll have a project specifically on September 11.
We're expecting to activate anywhere form 200 to 400
or more volunteers just for that one project.
>> Great, thank you.
With that we are going to wrap up.
We will-- for the persons asking about social media,
you can connect with serve.gov.
So it's Facebook dot com slash the word serve,
the word dot, D-O-T.
I'm sorry, it's just facebook.com/serve
and that will take you to the Corporation
of National Community Service's site or @serve.gov on Twitter
and David, would you repeat your--
>> Yes, so Facebook, it's facebook.com/911day
and then Twitter's the same.
It's twitter.com/911day and then you can go to our YouTube page.
If you want to you can actually see the new--
the videos that we have, there's lots of them.
The two most recent ones are right up front.
You can download the link.
I just sent them.
I just attached them in the chat, in the chat box
so that's a little different.
That's YouTube.com911dayofservice.
That's the only one where we couldn't get 911day.
>> Great, thanks.
Back to you Rhonda for wrap up.
>> Well, thank you all.
Please email us if you have any questions at sept11@cns.gov.
We look forward to working with all of you on this National Day
of Service and Remembrance and we hope you will post projects
and tweet and join all of the social media channels available
to you to help really build a strong momentum
and help the accomplishment of this day of service.
So thank you all for joining us, for taking an hour
out of your day and we hope that the information will be useful
to your project and to your community.